I love all the rhetoric and back-seat driving by pundits stating the New York State case against former President Donald Trump is either complete hooey, or a really weak case. After all, The Trumpster has more serious charges in both the January 6th insurrection and Georgia election tampering cases.

The New York case involves the participation by Trump in pre-2106 election hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump arranged a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in October 2016 to prevent her from discussing a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump in 2006.

Michael Cohen, a former private lawyer and fixer for Trump, says he paid Daniels using his own money and was not directed by Trump’s company or campaign to make the payment. He said Trump never reimbursed him for the payment.

Cohen would later contradict both statements under oath, stating Trump did in fact direct him to make the payment and reimbursed him.

The New Yorker magazine reports that Trump had an affair with Playboy model Karen McDougal from 2006 to 2007. The magazine said American Media Inc, publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid, paid McDougal $150,000 shortly after Trump became the Republican nominee for president in 2016 for exclusive rights to her story.

The National Enquirer never published the story.

Trump, when asked by reporters if he knew about the payment to Daniels, responded, "No." Asked why Cohen made the payment, Trump said, "You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen."

MAY 2018 -  In an ethics disclosure, Trump acknowledges reimbursing Cohen for the $130,000 paid for Daniels.

Cohen plead guilty to criminal charges in Manhattan federal court, including campaign finance violations over the hush money payments. He testified that Trump directed him to make the payments "for the principal purpose of influencing the election."

Trump, on Twitter, calls the hush money payments a "simple private transaction." In an interview with Reuters, he says the payment to Daniels "wasn’t a campaign contribution" and "there was no violation based on what we did." To him, “politically motivated Witch Hunt.”

So, either the Democrat machine is in full gear attempting to influence Trump’s 2024 campaign, which is obvious, or perhaps, just perhaps, Trump really did break NYS laws in the case.

No question the case is the weakest case against Trump and probably would not lead to prison time for the ex-president, but would add to his history of lies and deceit.

For all you dumb Trump followers, I’ll let you in some not so-secret information. Former federal prosecutor and author James D. Zirin illuminates more than 45 years of Trump’s legal disputes in his book, Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits, published in September 2019.

“Trump saw litigation as being only about winning,” Zirin writes. “He sued at the drop of a hat. He sued for sport; he sued to achieve control; and he sued to make a point. He sued as a means of destroying or silencing those who crossed him. He became a plaintiff in chief.”

Zirin argues that Trump has shown a chronic scorn for the law. “All this aberrant behavior would be problematic in a businessman,” he writes. “But the implications of such conduct in a man who is the president of the United States are nothing less than terrifying.”

If that is not enough to paint a true picture to Trump God followers, this does not include the number of Trump lawsuits he has filed and have been unceremoniously dismissed by the courts, even after becoming the President and after losing the 2020 election.

Former president Donald Trump is now facing a total of 19 legal actions – about half of which allege improper conduct during his presidency.

Most of the cases fall under three themes: financial wrongdoings that made him more money; his role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection; and his alleged interference in the 2020 election. Trump has denied wrongdoing in most of these cases. He has filed motions to dismiss several of them and has filed countersuits in some cases. Most of these senseless motions are seen as stalling tactics.

Two subsidiaries of the Trump Organization were convicted of multiple crimes, including tax fraud, falsifying business records and conspiracy, after a trial in New York City.

Trump was not personally a defendant in the case, which related to a scheme by his company since 2005 to avoid taxes on compensation in the form of perks including free apartments and luxury cars to then-chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg and other executives.

But Trump “knew exactly what was going on,” a prosecutor said in closing arguments last week in Manhattan Supreme Court.

The Trump Corp. and Trump Payroll Corp. were found guilty on all charges they faced.

The Trump Organization was fined $1.6 million – the maximum possible penalty – by a New York judge for running a decade-long tax fraud scheme, a symbolic moment because it is the only judgment for a criminal conviction that has come close to former President Donald Trump.

Don’t forget the "Trump University" debacle. A pair of investigations into Trump’s actions around Jan. 6 and his mishandling of classified documents. Those cases are proceeding.

Georgia prosecutors  said racketeering and conspiracy charges in probe of efforst to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss are "imminent". The investigation has centered in part on a January 2021 phone call that Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, asking him to "find" enough votes to overturn the Republican’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the November 2020 election. Days later, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an unsuccessful attempt to reverse Biden’s victory.

In addition to Trump’s January 2021 phone call, the investigation has examined a scheme to appoint an alternate slate of presidential electors in an effort to award Georgia’s electoral votes to Trump, rather than Biden, ahead of Congress’ certification of the results on Jan. 6, 2021.

The special grand jury heard testimony from 75 witnesses, including state officials such as Governor Brian Kemp and Raffensperger as well as Trump advisers such as U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham and attorney Rudy Giuliani. Many witnesses unsuccessfully sought to quash their subpoenas.

In a series of posts on his social media site Truth Social, Trump defended the phone call as "perfect" and repeated his false claim that the Georgia election was stolen.

So, why are the mucky muck Republican hierarchies defending this loser? The answer is simple. The Republican National Party knows fully well Trump is a dimwit and would lose in 2024, but the strategy is to hold on to the Trump base for federal and ‘red’ state elections. There are enough Trump voting loyalists to maintain a quasi-Trump legitimacy. Bottom line: keep control of the Senate and Congress and hopefully the appointments of future, far right Supreme Court positions

Meanwhile, far right Trump fans fan the illegitimacy and questionable  Democrat shenanigans. The only problem is that, so far,  rumor mongering and  floating charges involving Hillary Clinton, President Joe Biden, Biden’s son Hunter have shown  little, or no progress. Remember when former Trump hunting dog Rudy Giuliani announced that his trip to Ukraine would  blow the top off the Biden investigation? Yeah, it never materialized.

Now, Rudy is a broken (literally and figuratively) former lawyer with few if any supporters. 

Now, even Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is under investigation by Representative Republican big mouth and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. He has subpoenaed Bragg, days after Trump was charged in a 34-count felony indictment in connection with a hush money scheme involving a porn actor/former Playboy model.  This after Trump was charged in a 34-count felony indictment in connection with a hush money scheme involving a porn actor+.

Yet another bottom line: It is known that Trump has cheated on all three of his wives. He has been sued thousands of times and has sued and lost challenges to his slipping power. He has filed a number of company bankruptcies and paid numerous fines for his business practices. 

Surprisingly there are still enough Trump  supporters willing to follow the Pied Trump Piper.